Healthy Business Profile: Canadian School of Natural Nutrition

Feeding the Mind, Nourishing the Body

Kim D’Eon, RHN, and Melissa Tucker, RHN, are both graduates of Canadian School of Natural Nutrition.

When broadcaster Kim D’Eon ran into health issues she started seeing a naturopathic doctor, and it changed her life. Not only did it give her tools to address her own health, but it made her rethink her future. And she asked herself “How am I going to continue my career in a way that can be truly helpful for people?”

School seemed like the right answer, so in 2013 D’Eon enrolled in the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition (CSNN), graduating the following year as a Registered Holistic Nutritionist. “I thought before I went back to school that I knew a lot about nutrition, but after going through this program I realized there was so much valuable information I didn’t have,” she says.

Also, “connecting with other like-minded people who had gone through similar journeys was really useful in ways that I wouldn’t have thought when I went into the program,” she adds. “It’s kind of like finding your tribe. It gives you more fuel; it fires you up.”

The Canadian School of Natural Nutrition was founded in 1994 by Danielle Perrault, R.H.N., after students in her workshops on “Nutritional Symptomatology” started to ask how they could pursue further education in the field. Recognizing that there was a lack of programming, she started to build CSNN based on a commitment to “providing a visionary approach to preventive health care,” along with a belief that “our physical body needs more than wholesome nutrition – mind and consciousness play a significant role in our well-being,” as the school’s mission statement says.

Today, CSNN is one of Canada’s leading holistic nutrition schools, operating out of 13 classroom locations across Canada. It has about 7,100 graduates worldwide from its one-year full-time, and two-year part-time, programs. The school is licensed in numerous jurisdictions to offer the Natural Nutrition program which leads to designations that are exclusive to CSNN graduates.

In Alberta, graduates use either the C.H.N. or C.H.N.C. designation and call themselves Certified Holistic Nutritional Consultant™ professionals. In the rest of the country, CSNN graduates use the R.H.N. designation and call themselves Registered Holistic Nutritionist™ professionals, except in Quebec and the Atlantic provinces where they call themselves Registered Holistic Nutritional Consultant™ professionals.

In 2016, CSNN became Registered as a private career college under the Private Career Colleges Act, 2005. Graduates are qualified to work in a wide range of settings, from caregiving facilities to health clinics, food service outlets, spas, and sports centres.

Melissa Tucker is a CSNN graduate who offers her services as a nutrition and fitness coach and owns her own business, Fitlicious Inc. She attended the Culinary Arts program at George Brown College, but decided she needed further training afterwards.

“The transition into corporate wellness really needed that knowledge as well as that network of a more holistic nutrition approach,” she says. Tucker trains both athletes and CEOs, and says “the holistic realm really enables me to bridge the gap between them.”

One of her passions is working with children. “Sometimes parents don’t know what to feed their kids; giving them a diet plan doesn’t work. The holistic program really highlighted the fact that when you go into an in-depth interview with a client and really find out what the underlying issues are, they’re not overweight so much as they are overstressed. The program put some extra tools in my toolkit to help me find out the client’s ‘why’.”

In this “overfed, undernourished society,” she says, “the program helped me to understand the micro things we can do so that the macro things can do what they’re supposed to. Even if you don’t want to become a Registered Holistic Nutritionist, there’s value to knowing how to fuel the one and only body that you’ll have for your whole life.”

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